Van Morrison
Van Morrison is sounding better than ever
There is a website called setlist.fm which allows its users to vicariously attend pretty much any concert. Search the name…
The weird turned pro
Pop quiz time: which act was named Melody MakerGroup of the Year in 1975? The answer is not, as you…
The death of the live album
Next week The The release The Comeback Special, a 24-track live album documenting the band’s concert at the Royal Albert…
Off-the-peg ire
Over the decades, Van Morrison’s role within the tower of song has shifted from chief visionary officer to head of…
Potted herring and Lester Piggott
Q: ‘How would you define transcendence?’ A: ‘Well, how would you define it?’ I interviewed Van Morrison last year. (I’m…
Doo-wop deity
He toured with Little Richard, sang with Van Morrison, inspired the Beatles and Paul Simon. Graeme Thomson talks to Dion, one of the last living links to the early days of street-corner rock ’n’ roll
In 1968, even supercilious Boston was ankle-deep in LSD
‘And this is good old Boston/, The home of the bean and the cod,’ John Collins Bossidy quipped in 1910,…
Singing Ireland into being
In recent years there’s been a fashion for arts documentaries presented by celebs rather than boring old experts — presumably…
When pop gave way to rock
According to David Hepworth, the year he turned 21 was also the year when ‘a huge proportion of the most…
Bowie once praised Adolf Hitler… but he was always changing his tune
I was desperately worried that you hadn’t read or heard enough platitudinous drivel about David Bowie — and therefore felt…
An exquisite flowering of talent
It seems odd that a singer, musician, television performer and sculptor who typified the 1960s as vividly as Rory McEwen…
